For the most part, vehicles today operate as autonomous units separate from the digital information world around them. For example, there are a variety of instances where a vehicle's passengers may engage in financial transactions while in the vehicle, such as going through a toll booth. To allow for automatic payment of tolls, drivers may use RFID-enabled transmitters, such as E-ZPass. However, these RFID transmitters are tied to a user's account, which means that even if someone else drives the user's car through a toll booth, the user would be the one charged. Moreover, the toll charged cannot be apportioned to two or more of the passengers at the time of charging.
There are other examples of the inflexibility of vehicles. Some vehicles have on-board microprocessors and in-dash displays, such as LCD monitors. These types of vehicles may allow users to program certain personalizeable features and preferences, such as radio stations, temperature, seating position, and mirror position. However, these programmable settings are stored locally on the vehicle and not easily portable. Thus, when a person rents a rental car, he would have to manually adjust and configure all the settings as he has done for his own car.
The leading number of each reference number within the drawings indicates the figure in which that reference number is introduced and/or detailed. As such, a detailed discussion of reference number 101 would be found and/or introduced in FIG. 1. Reference number 201 is introduced in FIG. 2, etc.